


on the radio

by busaikko



Series: on the radio [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alien Culture, Amputation, Disabled Character, M/M, Prostitution, accountancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2011-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:17:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If John's father could only see him now, John always thinks.  All those times they fought about money, and what gets John out of the brothel is his talent with other people's income taxes.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	on the radio

> and then you take that love you made  
> and stick it into some--  
> someone else's heart  
> pumping someone else's blood  
> and walking arm in arm  
> you hope it don't get harmed  
> but even if it does  
> you'll just do it all again  
> On the Radio, Regina Spektor

If John's father could only see him now, John always thinks. All those times they fought about money, and what gets John out of the brothel is his talent with other people's income taxes. John's pretty sure that's ironic.

John starts out being intensely interested in micromanaging every _hawye_ he earns by sucking dick and being fucked. He has to learn how to read in order to understand banking and taxes and the stock market, but he's a Sheppard; he grew up with this stuff, it's like being thrown in the briar patch. Some of his regular clients for sex start paying him for doing their taxes. It goes from there.

John hadn't considered how sheltered he was. He's got a constantly-aching jaw from giving head and he's had anal fissures and hemorrhoids and really nasty infections, and he's had customers who were violent and days that were so fucked up that he's folded them like origami and hidden them away. But the first time he has to take the trolley to his accounting job he nearly drowns in overload; too many people stare or bang into his wheelchair, too many cracks in the sidewalk and too many steps to find a way around, so much shame in having to ask for help again, and again, and again. He gets to the building an hour late and shaking like he ran a marathon. Only the hospital's career counselor smoothing things over saves his job. Becoming an accountant probably toughens John up more than joining the military did.

John's cheerfully finding mistakes in a government audit of one of his accounts when he gets a buzz from the front desk and is told to go see a new client. He's annoyed, but he shuts down his workstation, pushes his stylus and memoboard and calculator into his bag, and heads for the meeting room. He's prepared for the worst, to be stared at, to receive clumsy pity. Into the breach, he thinks. To the pain.

He is not prepared for the man in the meeting room to be Colonel Cameron Mitchell, disguised in three days' worth of scruffy beard and wearing a sarong. John's so shocked he freezes. Mitchell looks him right in the eyes and says, "John," this huge stupid grin dawning over his face, and then John's being hugged, Mitchell's face pressing into his hair, and Mitchell saying _It's you, it's you_ over and over again.

It turns out John's subcutaneous transmitter was working all along.

"You should have seen McKay's face when all we found was an arm," Mitchell says, shaking his head. "Tragic like eight million kids finding out there was no Santa, God, or Jesus all at once."

John's feeling the exact opposite, treacherous giddy hope bubbling up. "Rodney. . . we crashed, he's not -- "

"He's alive and bitching," Mitchell says darkly. "In orbit on the Daedalus right now."

"The jumper crashed," John says, stubborn. "My team. . . ."

Mitchell deflates into sudden, alarming sympathy, and his words are kind. "You were piloting an F306X, you went through the wormhole and disappeared. Rodney's alive, Dex and Emmagan are kicking Wraith ass in Pegasus, the only person on your team who's dead is you. Well. Not anymore. Maybe you hit your head?"

"Maybe I did," John says, and after that there's nothing easier than leaving that planet forever.

Turns out Mitchell has John's job on Atlantis, but between him and Woolsey they get John settled in okay. John sees a lot of Mitchell. Mitchell's like Ronon, an exuberant hugger, and he has a whole bunch of football games on his external hard drive. One night after a couple of beers Mitchell leans over and kisses John.

John kisses back, curling his arm around Mitchell's neck, and when they break off he says, "You know I fucked people for money on that planet."

"Yeah," Mitchell says, and runs the backs of his fingers down John's jawline. The hospital had John's beard permanently removed after a while, because keeping him clean-shaven was tedious; he knows his skin feels weirdly soft there.

"So is this you being curious?" John asks flatly.

After a bare moment the words register, and Mitchell flinches back and away. "I like you," Mitchell says, sounding unhappy and frustrated, like John's accusing him when he's blameless as pure-driven snow.

John gives Cam a level look. He practices that look a lot in auditing; he knows it's effective. "Put yourself in my shoes," John says, "and then you tell me, wouldn't you be at least a _little_ confused?"

"Yeah," Cam says after a moment of wrinkling his forehead like his imagination can only be activated by crushing it between his eyebrows. "I'd be terrified."

John shrugs, and pulls his t-shirt off. Cam's watching him but trying not to look like he's watching. "I'm used to people staring," John says, waving at the seams of scars where the arm with the sub-cu used to be.

"I don't want to be _one of those people_ ," Cam blurts out. "I want us to be different. Good."

John's let himself get cheated out of his fees a few times because he believed words that were almost exactly the same. Hope is such a stupid thing, and it grows like a weed, and he has to touch Cam and kiss him and shove his clothes up as best he can, impelled more by that stupid hope than by lust.

Lying in bed afterwards, Cam plays with John's hair and kisses his face. He trails his other hand down the arm John's got wrapped loose around his waist, and cups the end of his arm gently.

"Hey," John says. "Hey, Cam?"

"Mnmp," Mitchell says.

"I lost my arms and legs, Cam," John says. He's never had to say it aloud before; it's not like he can keep it secret.

"I know," Mitchell says. He holds John a bit tighter and leans in for a kiss.

Kissing gets John hard again, but his body just does that now and he's used to ignoring it. He settles in, pressing up against Mitchell's warmth, hooking his leg over Mitchell's like an anchor. "Okay," John says, and falls asleep.

After that, well, after that. . .

When he gets to this part of the fantasy, John always imagines that things will get incredibly complicated, and working out the details of the complications makes him feel tired: Cam will want John to see doctors, or go to Earth. Maybe the SGC has a Goa'uld sarcophagus, or maybe the Tok'ra or the Asgard or someone has a cure for missing limbs. John can't even figure out what kind of job he could reasonably do on Atlantis, but this is his fantasy, damn it, so he assumes it has to do with flying. Mostly, he concentrates on imagining the total wish-fulfillment of his escape and the graphic good sex with his hot Air Force boyfriend.

John only met Mitchell a few times, but someone told John that Mitchell's dad was an amputee, so John figures that's why his subconscious likes Mitchell so much that it made him John's imaginary sex friend. Escapism: cheaper than a drug problem, John thinks, and yawns wide and opens his eyes.

He blinks up at his dark ceiling for a moment, letting the mental backdrop of Atlantis -- colored windows, ocean, clean sharp lines -- pull back and resolve into his rented one-room apartment. Rolling his head, he squints at his alarm clock. It's going to ring soon anyway, so he turns it off and stretches hard enough to force a jaw-cracking yawn out.

John's scared sometimes by how home-hungry he is, like he could get swallowed down by need. But all the crap about accounting is the only true part in his fantasy, so life keeps him busy when he's awake and consumes all his concentration; he leaves the dreams and yearning behind in bed. They'll be there when he gets back. Now, he has a meal to cook and work to do. Good enough to be going on with, for today if not for the rest of his life.


End file.
